Devonshire Characters and Strange Events. Baring-Gould Sabine

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      In the above account and in the pedigree all the names are fictitious except those of Mrs. Runt and the servant, Harkett.

      Now, was Mr. Cresford in the plot? Did Mrs. Runt make away with Anna, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Cresford? That he should have connived at the murder of his child is improbable. When he heard that Anna was dead, did he agree to have the body smuggled away in a box to his own family seat in Gloucestershire, and hidden under the floor in his room? That is not so unlikely. That he was an utterly unprincipled man is clear. At the same time that he married the heiress of the Wellands, he was carrying on an intrigue with Mrs. Runt, and he had a daughter by her of the same age – or thereabouts – as his legitimate daughter by his wife.

      It may be suspected with some probability that Mrs. Runt did purposely make away with the little heiress, and then, having told Mr. Cresford that it had died a natural death, induced him to agree to the substitution of his bastard daughter for his legitimate child who was dead, so that this bastard might inherit the Welland estate.

      The stay of the lady who wrote the above, and her husband and daughter, at this Welland House was short. Unexpectedly their own mansion became vacant, and they moved at once to it. But during the time they were at Welland she never saw the Grey Woman.

      ROBERT LYDE AND THE “FRIEND’S ADVENTURE”

      A True and Exact Account of the Retaking a ship, called the Friend’s Adventure of Topsham, from the French; after She had been taken six days, and they were upon the Coasts of France with it four days. When one Englishman and a Boy set upon seven Frenchmen, killed two of them, took the other Five prisoners, and brought the said Ship and them safe to England. Their Majesties’ Customs of the said Ship amounted to £1000 and upwards. Performed and written by Robert Lyde, Mate of the same ship.” London, 1693.

      In February, 1689, Robert Lyde, of Topsham, shipped on board a pink of the same port, eighty tons, Isaac Stoneham, master, bound for Virginia, and on 18 May following arrived there, took in a lading, and set sail in company with a hundred merchantmen for home under convoy of two men-of-war. A fortnight after, storms separated the Topsham boat from the convoy, so that she had to make the best of her way home alone, and on 19 October came up with two Plymouth vessels of the fleet about forty leagues west of Scilly, the wind easterly. On the 21st the crew saw four other ships to leeward which they took to be some of their consorts, but which proved to be French privateers. They managed to escape them, but were captured by a privateer of St. Malo, of twenty-two guns and over a hundred men, on 24 October, and were taken to St. Malo as prisoners, where they were detained and treated with gross inhumanity, during seventeen days. Lyde says: “If we had been taken by Turks, we could not have been used worse. For bread we had 6 lbs. and one cheek of a Bullock for every 25 men for a day; and it fell out that he that had half a Bullock’s eye for his lot, had the greatest share.” After seventeen days they were all removed to Dinan, where were many other English prisoners confined in the cramped tower of the fortification that is still standing, with its small cells. Here they were herded together in a place not fit to contain one quarter of the number, and there they were retained for three months and ten days. “Our allowance was 3 lb. of old Cow-Beef without any Salt to flavour it, for seven men a day; but I think we had 2 lbs. of Bread for each Man, but it was so bad that Dogs would not eat it, neither could we eat but very little, and that that we did eat did us more hurt than good, for ’twas more Orts than Bread, so we gave some of it to the Hogs, and made Pillows of the rest to lay our Heads on, for they allowed us fresh Straw but once every five weeks, so that we bred such swarms of lice in our Rags that one Man had a great Hole eaten through his Throat by them, which was not perceived till after his Death, and I myself was so weak that it was 14 weeks after my releasement before I recovered any tolerable strength in me.

      “They plundered us of our Clothes when we were taken, and some of us that had Money purchased Rugs to cover our Rags by day, and keep us warm by night; but upon our return home from France, the Deputy Governor of Dinan was so cruel as to order our said Rugs to be taken from us, and staid himself and saw it performed; and when some of our fellow Prisoners lay a dying they inhumanly stript off some of their Cloaths, three or four days before they were quite dead. These and other Barbarities made so great an Impression upon me, as that I did then resolve never to go a Prisoner there again, and this Resolution I did ever after continue in and by the Assistance of God always will.”

      Lyde returned to his home at Topsham, an exchange of prisoners having been effected, but not till four hundred out of the six hundred English prisoners crowded into the dungeons at Dinan had perished of disease and starvation.

      In his Preface, Lyde says: “I here present you with a Token of God Almighty’s Goodness СКАЧАТЬ